World Science Festival: The Future of Water

After a three-month run in Dublin, "Surface Tension: The Future of Water" hopped across the pond and into New York City for the World Science Festival. Here are just a few things you can see, learn about and interact with when you visit the exhibit, which will be housed in the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center until Aug. 11.

Charge Your Phone With Water

Charge Your Phone With Water

If you’re the kind of camper who likes to get away from electricity but still wants access to the outside world, this is the pocket-size tool for you. PowerTrekk, a Swedish-made, hydropowered cellphone adapter, uses fuel-cell technology to convert the hydrogen in a small amount of water into electricity. What’s more, you won’t be responsible for polluting off-grid environments as you wander through them. PowerTrekk’s only byproduct is a wee bit of water vapor.

Water Words

Water Words

The most eye-catching installation in Surface Tension is the BIT-FALL. A 10-foot-tall "printer," this device pulls buzzwords from news stories on the Web and spells them out in H2O. Each word appears for only a second or two as it falls to the mat below, but the words are clearly legible. "It was up in Dublin during our elections, so there were a lot of political words like ‘scandal’ or ‘campaign,’" Sarah Quinn, a volunteer from Dublin, says.

The printer works a little like an ink jet. A series of nozzles at the top of the device fire based on what words are digitally fed into its queue. Some words spelled out in the hour and a half while we were there: "Zimmer," "NYT," and "Fix."